Tag: Jesus Christ

For this year’s Easter post, I thought I’d share an abbreviated version of what we do at my church. We’re a tiny congregation, which affords us the luxury of some habits which would be more difficult in larger congregations. On holidays, particularly Easter and Christmas, our worship service involves Scripture readings by members of the congregation, with our hymns and praise songs interspersed. The Scripture readings are hand-picked to tell the story of God’s redemption of mankind, from beginning to Christ. I pray that you are blessed by what you read here.

Man Made a Little Lower than God

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” …God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. (Genesis 1:27, 28, 31a)

O Lord, our Lord,How majestic is Your name in all the earth,Who have displayed Your splendor above the heavens!

…

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;What is man that You take thought of him,And the son of man that You care for him?Yet You have made him a little lower than God,And You crown him with glory and majesty!You make him to rule over the works of Your hands;You have put all things under his feet. (Psalm 8:1, 3-6a)

It came into my mind this morning that it would be nice to have some sort of special Easter post. Resurrection Sunday is, after all, the most important celebration in the Christian calendar, no matter what your denomination. Had Christ not died in our place, we would not have freedom from our sin nature; had He not risen into glory, we would have no hope of glory and Life ourselves! All of human history revolves around this great Event. Indeed, it is the very eucatastrophe of history itself.

So I desired to have some relevant material to here present. But as the thought came to me this morning, I have little hope of producing something new for the day. I will soon be working on a review of Ben-Hur, which is subtitled “A Tale of the Christ,” but even should I begin that today, I doubt I should be able to finish it in time.

Instead, I post here a short story I wrote some years ago. It was one of those rare times where the story just sort of fell out of me and onto the page. I felt it in my heart, I knew in my head exactly what it should be. When I tried to edit it afterwards, it would accept none but the tiniest changes. At any rate, it is relevant to the theme of our Lord’s Passion, and I hope it gives some good to you.

In addition to the inspiration of the Gospel stories themselves, I also took inspiration from the Old English poem The Dream of the Rood.

Place of Honor

by David

I never harmed anyone, except for once, and this was not of my own choice.

My home was in the courtyard of the governor’s palace, in a corner mostly ignored by the gardeners because it was just inside the walls, where no fine plants of any kind were kept. During the day I gratefully warmed myself as the sun beat down, but the dryness of its heat often left my skin hard and baked, all the water sucked out of it, and so I also welcomed the cold of night as a respite, though I felt less invigorated in those hours. But more than anything I watched for clouds, not just for the shade they brought in the sweltering noon but because the dark ones brought down the cool waters of the heavens. Oh, how I longed for those waters more than anything else, relishing every drop that burst on my skin and dashed the dust away, seeping into all my eager crevices and injecting my veins with life! With the morning dew, this was all the water I would ever get, for unlike others of my kind who received such gifts from people, I was not beautiful, but thin, brown, and sharp when people came close.

They surprised me, they did, the soldiers, when they came in the evening and tore me from my place of rest. I clung desperately to the wall but one drew his sword and hacked me away from it, and then the carrying was easy because I was so light and small. Laughing uproariously, they shouted of “his” stupidity and “his” weakness; what a fool, what a stubborn pitiful fool! Bad for him, but good for a laugh. The soldier held me firmly but tenderly, mindful of my sharpness. Orange light writhed between the great marble columns of the palace doorway, and as they carried me into a side room, closer to the barracks with a dirt floor, I could see more of them all around, some laughing together at a cruel joke, others looking bored, some disgusted, and a few who studiously kept any thought from flickering across their faces.

A circle, more or less, they formed, mocking a ragged figure who staggered bloody in the center with his back to me. The pain of the soldier’s sword still lingered where he had hacked me, and I felt my life ebbing away. His hands tightened around my body then, and bent me hard. Excruciating pain, the snapping of some branches, but I had no voice with which to cry out. I was lifted up, twisted upon myself into a circlet, and tied so. They must have grabbed the mocked man to hold him still, but honestly I was too engrossed in my own pain to notice. I was brought towards him, lifted above his head. His eyes glanced up at me, once, and in them I saw the pain and the hurt of every living thing since the creation of the world, all our sorrows and rebellion, all the soullessness, even among plants such as I. Forgive me, I whispered, hoping that he above all men might understand my cry. I see who you are now. Forgive me for what they will use me for. And in his eyes I saw him answer, Do not worry, wild briar, for you will be remembered with honor far longer than they.

They jammed me onto his head, winding my branches into his hair and forcing my thorns into his brow so the blood ran over his eyes and dripped off his nose. He cried out. I recognized the voice as that which had caused my ancestors to burst from the new dust of the earth on the third day. When they stopped beating him, he crawled slowly to his feet, and as I rose higher and higher on his head I felt the wind blow in through the open doorway. It flew past us with a cry that sounded to me like the ringing of royal trumpets, and suddenly I felt proud, as though all the flowers and vines and bushes of the world now looked on my place of honor with envy.

“A crown!” laughed the soldiers. “A crown of thorns for the King of the Jews!”

Title: “The Dream of the Rood”Author: Anonymous 8th century Anglo-Saxon, likely a member of a religious house.Length: 158 linesSynopsis: The nameless narrator dreams of the Cross (or “Rood,” for the archaic term) on which Christ was crucified. The Cross, finding its voice, relates to him the experience of the Crucifixion, and how it feels itself to be a fellow-participant in the event.Version: I had the pleasure of translating The Dream of the Rood from the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) while at university, and it was the assignment I took the most pleasure in. While I’m proud of that effort, I’ll be using here Prof. Glenn’s translation, mostly because of convenience. It seems to be a good one, preserving the alliteration of the original as well as a fairly literal sense of the words.Recommendation: T.G. Duncan, a professor at the University of St Andrews, believes this to be one of the finest religious poems of any language, and from my limited experience of that genre I agree. It is passionate, inspired, rich in symbolic imagery, and, especially for a Christian, can be quite emotional. The poet was a true artist, and The Dream of the Rood is wonderful.

Read it here in translation by Jonathan Glenn of the University of Central Arkansas! You can read more about the historical and cultural background of the poem here, as well as read the original Old English side-by-side with a modern translation, and on Wikipedia. If you want to hear the Old English read aloud (very cool!), listen here.

Key Thoughts

The poem is structured in four parts:

Lines 1-27 are the Dreamer’s introduction, describing the glorious appearance of the Cross.

At lines 28-77 the Cross takes over and tells of how, as a tree, it was cruelly cut down and fashioned into an instrument of death, only to be co-opted by the hero Christ as a vehicle for his victory over Death.

In lines 78-121, the Cross then preaches a sermon of salvation to the Dreamer, which,

in lines 122-156, the Dreamer repeats to us, the readers.

The imagery and metaphors can be difficult to decipher at times; this was the style of Old English poetry, to revel in the obscure and dreamlike, to delight in riddles. The poet here finds as many different words to refer to the Cross as he can: “wondrous tree” (“syllicre trēow”), “beacon” (“bēacen”), “gallows” (“fracodes”), “victory-beam” (“sigebēam”), and “glory’s tree” (“wuldres trēow”). Likewise he has many ways of referring to Christ: “Healer” (“Hǣlendes,” which can also be translated “Savior”), “young hero” (“geong hæleð”), “Man” (“guman”), “God of hosts” (“weruda God”)…you get the idea.

Notice the theme of strength and victory – this is a poem about a great battle, won when Christ voluntarily sacrificed Himself for a sinful mankind, and then conquered death through his resurrection. The poet views this as something so mighty and beautiful that it alone has the power to buy true life for mankind and all of creation.

Modern Christians may not recognize this Cross, whose appearance wavers between being encrusted with jewels and gold, and drenched in blood and gore.

“Yet through that gold I clearly perceived
old strife of wretches, when first it began
to bleed on its right side. With sorrows most troubled,
I feared that fair sight. I saw that doom-beacon
turn trappings and hews: sometimes with water wet,
drenched with blood’s going; sometimes with jewels decked.” (lns. 18-23).

The change from bloody to bejewelled proclaims the preciousness of Christ’s blood, a central Easter theme. Of course, such blood would not likely be precious if the story ended with death, but the fact that the blood is expected to become a figurative cleansing agent for men’s souls makes the wearing of it a sort of badge of honor for the Cross.

I also find Christ’s portrayal quite interesting. The gospels affirm Christ’s identity as the Passover lamb of the Jewish seder; that is, the meek and humble sacrifice. But there is another element to the Crucifixion that is often overlooked – Christ’s power, even in death. Read the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and you will not find a Jesus that is a victim, but rather one who is always in control of events. He gives the Romans permission to torture Him, He chooses to go to the Cross, and He voluntarily gives up His spirit to the Father (that’s right, Christ wasn’t killed, as though some outside force robbed Him of life; He gave up His spirit before the natural moment of death, displaying His self-control and strength of will). And The Dream of the Rood very consciously depicts this. Jesus is a great hero, the greatest, “strong and resolute” (“strang ond stiðmod”), and described with royal terms: He is “heaven’s Lord” (“heofenes Dryhten”), the “Wielder of Victories” (“sigora Wealdend”), the “Prince of glory, Heaven’s guardian” (“geweorðode, wuldres ealdor”).

The young hero stripped himself then (that was God Almighty),
strong and resolute. He ascended onto the high gallows,
brave in the sight of many, there, [since] he wished to release mankind.
I trembled when the man embraced me. However, I dared not bow down to the earth,
fall to the surface of the earth, but I had to stand fast.
I was raised [as a] cross. I lifted up the mighty king,
the lord of the heavens; I dared not bend down. (lns. 39-45)

This is no execution! Christ is preparing for battle, like a mythic hero of the pagan traditions. No man puts Him on the Cross; He mounts it Himself. No man kills Him; He eagerly relinquishes His own life.

Yet it is not only mankind that benefits, for the poet understands Christ’s resurrection to be so mighty that it redeems all of creation from the deathly effects of Adam’s sin (as enumerated in Genesis 3) – even an inanimate object such as the Cross. Notice that the Cross is relating its own conversion experience. As mankind was seduced by the devil in Genesis to become sinful creatures, so the Tree was cut down by evil men and made into an instrument of torture and death. Then, the Cross is washed over completely in Christ’s blood; in its own words,

I was all drenched with blood,
covered from the man’s side, after he had sent forth his spirit. (lns. 48-49)

This is as literal a baptism as you can get. God promises holiness to Christians when He says ‘You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine’ (Leviticus 20:26), and likewise the Cross of the poem is become holy through its baptism. It exults in its salvation:

Formerly, I was the most fierce of torments,
most hateful to people, before I opened the right
path of life to them, the speech-bearers. (lns. 87-89)

Like all Christians, the Cross of the poem has taken part in Christ’s death and resurrection. It’s a unique way to portray the wonderful theological truth that all of creation is wrapped up in God’s plan. In Genesis, all of creation fell with Adam’s sin. In Christ, all of creation is redeemed because of His death and resurrection. Be not proud, O death, for where is thy sting now? You are conquered, overthrown, and cast out – the Lord of Life has done so!

The Son was triumphant on that expedition,
mighty and successful, when he came with the multitude,
the host of souls, into God’s kingdom,
the Lord Almighty, to the delight of the angels,
and of all the saints, who in the heavens before
dwelled in glory, when their Ruler, the Almighty
God came, where his homeland was. (lns. 150-156)

Happy Easter to you all! I pray that your day be bright, beautiful, and full of joyful love.

Also, if you read and liked the whole poem, I myself wrote a short story inspired by it, on a similar theme, that you can read here. Let me know what you think of it!